November 11.1996 . TheNation. 19

Representative McKinney, who has supported aid to Israel and . worked closely with Jewish members of the House, suggests that

the real impetus for Mitnick’s attacks on her is a desire to break apart the black-white coalition her campaign has forged.

But Shirley Reams doesn’t think that will happen. “I had

it was amazing,” she said. “There were Jews, Gentiles, wealthy, poor-most of them women-all stuffing envelopes for Cynthia. It was a beautiful sight. And I don’t think any of us are going to let some politician pull us apart. This is a coalition that’s been waiting to be born for a long time. Cynthia’s brought it’into

a chance to stop by Cynthia’s headquarters the other night and being, and it’s not going away..”

FIGHTERS ARMED BY PAKISTAN HAVE TURNED THE AFGHAN CAPITAL INTO A NO-WOMAN’S LAND.

Kabul’s Patriarchv With Guns J

I FRED HALLIDAY I he capture by Taliban guerrillas of the Afghan capital, Kabul, however short- or long-lived, has come after two years of one of the most obnoxious interventions by one state in the affairs of another in many years.

Reported in the West asan indigenous struggle, in fact Pakistan set up the Taliban as a semi- regular fighting force in 1994, recruiting the leaders from religious schools, or madrasas, in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan and provid- ing them with the guns, money, fuel and tech- nical support to conquer first the western part of Afghanistan and now much of the rest of the countrf. Since its creation in 1947, Pakistan has harbored the goal of dominating its northern neighbor, and its desire to do so has increased all the more since the Central Asian republics declared their independence from Moscow in 1991. Now Pakistan believes that it can not only achieve this strategic goal but also monopolize trade, and the export of oil and gas, from Central Asia, thereby cutting other contenders-Russia, Iran, Turkey-ut of the game.

The Taliban fighters claim to be simply “religious students,” followers of Islam. But the cla&, crumbles upon examination. The religious schools they originated from in Pakistan are part of a tendency known as the Deobandi, named after an antimodern theological college established in India in the nineteenth century that opposed the more liberal, reform-&nded college at Aligarh. When Pakistan was established as a Muslim state, the Deoban- dis at first refused to recognize it. But, tactical as ever, they .soon changed their minds and have worked ever since through the As- sembly of Islamic Clergy (a conservative political party currently ,allied with Pakistan’s d i n g People’s Party) to gain as much.influ- ence as possible. Like many Christian fundamentalists h the Unit- ed States and the ultra-orthodox haredim in Israel, they,understand the importance of controlling social behavior and education, and of forming tactical alliances with the military. In Pakistan this in-’ cludes the Interservices Intelligence Directorate, the main’ securi- ty body responsible for running arms to Afghanistan during the eighties, and Home Aftairs Minister Gen. Naseerullah Babar, who

Fred Halliday, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, is the author o f Islam and the Myth of Con- frontation (I.B. Tauris).

is, like the Taliban, from the Pathan ethnic group. Once established and armed, the Taliban have

been able to recruit widely among the Pathan tribes of Afghanistan, who represent about half the population. Of the six members of their ruling council, five are mullahs from the Pa- than city of Kandahar, while the sixth is from a breakaway faction of Tajiks, or Persian speak- ers, in the northeast province of Badakhshan. It

8 is this ethnic character of the Taliban that has alarmed so many others in Afghanistan, lead-

ing nearly a quarter-million Tajiks and Uzbeks to flee an already battered Kabul (which is far more badly’damaged than Sarajevo, as Jonathan Steele recently reported in the London Guardian). The Pathan identity of the Taliban also explains, in part, the al- liance that grew up against it, which involves Uzbeks under the semi-independent warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum; Tajiks under former defense minister Ahmad Shah Massoud; and the Shiite Muslim Hazara, who make up about 20 percent of the country’s population.

he Taliban interpretation of Islam, which claims to derive all its authority from the’Koran alone, without reference to any other sacred text or source, is open to doubt. One of their first acts was to ban images of living beings. They have T carried out pubiic ‘‘executions’’ of television sets and have

banned photography. But the trend within Islam that is against images-strongly influenced by e i ly Christianity and Judaism- is based not on the Koran at all but on the supposed sayings of the Prophet, the hadith. It is in one of the hadith that Moham- med reportedly said that no angel will enter a house in which there is either a dog or a painting. Another says that on the day of judgment the worst punishment will be reserved for artists. For the tribal authoritarians this contradiction does not matter, any more than does the fact that their ban on women’s education and employment is an attempt to impose tribal custom, not Is- lamic law, on Kabul and other cities. Patriarchy with guns is the realitl, not piety or theological consistency.

The secret of the Taliban’s success involves a further dimen- sion, one that ties them into the whole recent history of Af- ghanistan: They have also received support from some military elements associated with the most hard-line wing of the former

T - -

‘

20 The Nation. November 11,1996

When The Nation is available in high school libraries, reports a survey conducted by School Library Media Quarterly, it is one of the top dozen magazines actu- ally used by students. Unfortunately, in more than . three libraries out of four - both public and high school libraries- The Nation is not available. The rea- sons? Everything fiom budget cuts to the “discre- tion,, of the school board or librarian. The remedy? The Nation’s ADOW-A-LIBRARY program. For just $28 (46% off our regular subscription rate) you can put a full year’s issues of The Nation into an institu- tion on our own “high priority’; list - libraries where we feel The Nation’s presence could make the most

1 profound difference - ranging fi-om inner-city high ~ schools to one of the eleven libraries in Chesapeake, 1 Virginia, headquarters for Pat Robertson and his

Christian Coalition.

I

Q . 5 $ p ’ : ’ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ p-.* HOLIDAY SEASON;:^^^^ *,;..@; Qyf JOIN THE NATION’S $23:&< ”‘3 4 ~ ~ ~ ~ m ~ + ] B R A R Y p R O G m y k

YES! I’d like to adopt “high priority” list of Nation-less ‘libraries.

libraries on your

Ll My check for $-($28 for each l-yeq subscription)

Ll Please bill me later. is enclosed.

My Name

Address

City State - Zip

. .

Ll I prefer to make a gift of 2% Nation to the specific library. whose name and address are listed on a separate page.

Unless ’you specify otherwise, a card will be sent to each of your chosen libraries to announce these generous gifts in your name.

Mail to: The Nation, Adopt-A-Library Program, 72 Fifth Ave., NewYork, NY 10011

Communist regime. A former defense minister, Lieut. Gen. Shah- nawaz Tanai, who fled Kabul for Pakistan’ after a failed coup in 1990, and a former Interior Minister, Gen. Sayed Gulabzoy, now living in Moscow, have aided the Taliban, providing some of the tank crews and pilots needed in their campaign.

The Taliban have not hesitated to settle scores from the Com- munist period. One of the first things they did when they entered Kabul was to seize former Communist president Najibullah, who had ruled Afghamstan from 1986 to 1992 and played a key role in the process that led to the Soviet withdrawal. He gave up power in April 1992 on the understanding, underwritten by the U.N., that he could leave the country. But the new government reneged on that deal, so Najibullah remained cooped up in the U.N. compound in Kabul. The Taliban had told him they were willing to work with him, so he declined offers from the fleeing regime to take him with them. Only a few hours before his death he telephoned his family in Delhi to assure them that he had good relations with the Taliban. He soon learned the truk They took him to the former presi- dential palace, beat and castrated him, and then, when he asked to make a final statement for posterity, shot him in the side of the head and hung his body, alongside that of his brother, from a traffic control tower. In adnteresting,reflection of old intia- Communist feuds, neither Gulabzoy, who worked with Najibullah for several years, nor Babrak Kannal, the Communist leader he replaced in 1986, attended the mourning service at the Moscow mosque at which the local Af&an community had gathered.

’

ince taking Kabul the Taliban have not only killed associates.of the former Commhist and Islamist regimes but have banned women from appearing in public without a veil and (in marked contrast to Iran) from education and working outside the home. The worst fate befalls women in need of medical attention:

Men are not allowed to treat them, but neither are women allowed to work in most clinics or hospitals. Although this has aroused international outrage, three states in the U.N. Security Council- China, Indonesia and Egypt--opposed a motion condemning the Taliban for their policies on women. Pakistan, of course, immediately recognized the new government. From the private sector, the California-based oil company Unocal also voiced its support: Unocal has been involved in planning a pipeline from Central Asia through western Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean.

Others, however, have not been so welcoming. Pakistan’s am- bitions in Central Asia have long caused alarm in Iran, in Russia and in the majority of Central Asian states. Within days of the Tali- ban seizure of Kabul,‘the leaders of the Central Asian counlries, plus Russia, met in the Kazakh capital, Almaty, to work out a re- sponse. They called for noninterference in Afghanistan’s affairs,. but this is the last thing that will happen. While Pakistan is busy ~

reinforcing the Taliban, Iran, which sees them as a branch of what the Ayatollah Khomeini called islam-i imrikai, “American Islam,” has denounced them for their retrograde policies. Iran also blames the Taliban for murdering a Shiite leader last year after they invit- ed him to join them in discussions. Tajikistan fears that the Talik~an will back the fundamentalists in its own country. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are more ambivalent: The Turkmenians hope to export gas through western Afghanistan and keep the Taliban from interfering in their affairs; the Uzbeks have been exploring ’ an alliance with Pakistan that would enable them to trade via

November 11,1996 . TheNation. 21

what has been accomplished by the

Indian Ocean ports and so lessen their dependence on Russia. Despite what was said in Almaty, interference in Afghanistan

will continue. The new anti-Taliban coalition is receiving aid- from Iran, Russia and India. Only if Uzbekistan forces its Uzbek ally in Afghanistan, General Dostum, to make a deal with the Tali- ban will some solution be found. But Dostum has other backers, and with his autonomous region in northern Afghanistan, site of gas, gold and uranium, he has little reason to give in. When asked why he opposed the Taliban, he replied that it was because of their ban on music and alcohol. If Dostum does make a deal- something the Taliban were urgently seeking at press tim-it will involve a de facto partition of the country into different ethnic

, areas, with the Taliban holding the Pathan regions and the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara forces controlling their own.

It is easy to exaggerate the extent to which events in Afghani- stan correspond to some broad game plan involving great-power rivalries. Despite Pakistan’s interference, much of the impetus for these recent developments lies in the disruption of Afghan soci- ety over nearly two decades of war, the growth of an arms trade and a narcotics trade that no one controls, and the pull of differ- ent ethnic groups. The street value of Afghan heroin exports is. reckoned to be $80 billion-a strong source of independence for the Afghan growers and Pakistani middlemen handling the trade. (Although they publicly denounce the drug trade, the Taliban have used it to finance their operations.) Yet international agendas, stretching across the Asian continent and the former U.S.S.R., of course will play a part in the country’s future.

also discuss how the Army’s lessons

or Moscow, the calculation and fears are clear enough. A fun- damentalist re&e in Kabul would threaten the stability of the Central Asian post-Communist regimes. Short of that it would encourage those regimes to trade through Pakistan, F thus depriving Russia of important economic influence in

formerly dependent republics. This new Central Asian threat is subsumed under a broader pattern of geopolitical anxiety: In the West, NATO is pressing inexorably nearer the Soviet border, and Moscow cannot stop it; in the Far East, China is a rising eco- nomic and military power, whose interests challenge those of Russia; now, in the middle, there has emerged this third chal- lenge, complicated by echoes of the Soviet involvement in Af- ghanistan in the eighties.

Washington, for its part, is working farther west, in the Cas- pian, to reduce links between Russia and the Transcaucasian. republics, and at the same time to contain Iran and cut it out of oil and gas transit deals. “Anything the Iranians can do, we can undo,” one senior State Department official recently said of Iranian policy in this area. The U.S. Central Asian policy has a similar logic. For this reason alone, leaving aside its links to the Pakistani intelligence services or the role of Unocal, Washing- ton is seen as sympathetic to a Taliban victory. American offi- cials have already talked to the new leaders, thereby granting them a measure of legitimacy. While Washington may criticize the Taliban on select issues, the fact remains that Pakistan, a U.S. client, is behind them; that they are opposed by Iran may enhance their position.

Read what General Colin L. Powell says about ALL THAT W

A Twentieth Century , Fund Book; ’ Published by

Basic Books ’

41 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021 The Twentieth Century Fund For a free catalog of all TCF books call 212-535-4441

,

22 . The Nation. November 11. 1996

American responsibility for recent events in Afghanistan is greater than Administration officials pretend. The United States in fact sabotaged the prospects for a peaceful settlement in the late eighties. The U.S.S.R. agreed to pull out its forces in return for a cessation of U.S. and Pakistani aid to the anti-Communist Islamist forces fighting Najibullah. Confident that Moscow could do nothing about it, Washington ignoredthat agreement and con- tinued to arm the guerrillas. His regime survived much longer than most had anticipated, but in the end, following the August

1991 coup attempt in Moscow, Soviet financial and military aid to Kabul ceased and the government collapsed. It was then that the fundamentalists came to power in a coalition, and a new round of chaos and destruction began. Much of the responsibility for that, and for the military and patriarchal terror that has followed, lies with Washington. One would like to think that as they watch reports of the Taliban victory in Kabul, Ronald Reagan, George Shultz, Robert Gates and their ilk will lose a little sleep. It does not seem very likely.

UP FROM LIBERALISM: THE EMERGING CONTOURS OF A NEW PROGRESSMSM.

Left Turn Ahea I DAVID DYSSECAAIRD MALLIGK I

hoever is elected President this fall, the signs are that a tectonic . shift in the American political landscape is in the making. This seismic realignment could throw

some time. And it would mean making a sustained and serious effort to take the lessons we’ve learned over the past thuty years-in community organizing, issue activism, economic development,

up anything from right-wing populism to corporate fascism. But it could also give rise to a new progressive politics that goes beyond traditional liberalism and conservatism.

Both Republicans and Democrats have lost their hold on the voters, and in the coming years there is little likelihood of either regenerating into a new, more attractive electoral identity. The Republicans called for a revolution-and faltered. Bill Clinton has talked about the revitalization of his party. He has cast him- self as a “New Democrat” and has called for “reinventing gov- ernment.” He has even flirted with a “politics of meaning.” But Clinton is like a child whose attention span is too short to see his way through a tough problem. His interest in proposals for party renewal fizzles out before any real debate on them can begin.

No wonder Americans are fed up with the present political parties and are ripe for an alternative. In 1992 the public voted for change by supporting the Democrats; in ’94 by voting Re- publican. The message is clear enough People have had enough of both parties.

Progressives should stop acting defensive and embrace the current state of public opinion. Liberalism has never been ‘ ‘ o d thing anyway. Distrust of government, now a staple of right-wing militias, was a rallying cry of sixties student movements. At that time it was commminity organizers, not conservative politicians, who attacked welfare bureaucrats for fostering a “zookeeper mentality.” Decentralization and empowerment, conservative code words today for states’ rights and disentitlement, were once cornerstones of progressive politics.

Breaking with liberalism-in a friendly way-would not be a new notioh for progressives. But it would require a more public airing of OUT criticisms of liberal programs than we’ve heard in

David Dyssegaard Kallick, editor of Social Policy magazine (w.- socia2policyorg;), is writing a book about politics beyond liberal and conservative.

town pladg-and forging from them a new synthesis. The outlines of a new progressive politics can readily be

sketched. Let’s focus, for instance, on three of the main areas of disputed terrain in politics today: the role of government, assist- ance to “the needy” and management of the economy.

What is the proper role of government in society? Many pro- gressive’ movements have stressed that the role of government is not to solve problems for people but to create a climate in which people have the resources and access to power to solve their own problems. Who are the actors we see carrying out a social agenda? Rather than envisioning only two arenas of action-private enter- prise and govekent-we must see both these sectors together with and balanced by a third, strongly enhanced, public sector, made up of unions, the media and activist and advocacy groups, as well as an array of organizations and informal groups cap- tured under the current buzzword “civil society.”

Liberalism has been too single-minded in its emphasis on gov- ernment and, in the process, it has inadvertently let other sectors off the hook., The women’s movement understood this when it called for a politicization of personal life. The E.R.A. and family leave were government responsibilities, but changing the balance of power in personal relationships was a matter. for individuals and groups in civil society. Few feminists envisioned laws requir- ing men to share in housework or child care; what most expected was a combination of social pressures, small groups supporting those seeking change and gradual “consciousness-raising” of individuals. This would go hand in hand with the educational work of large organizations. and government measures support- ing changed relationships between men and women, such as actions to require equal pay for equal work, prevent sexual har- assment and increase opportunities for girls in school. We can’t give up on government action, but neither should we assume that government is the best mechanism for all social action.

The environmental movement also seems to be moving in this